


great things

by hanpersands



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, F/M, Romance, Stabbing, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanpersands/pseuds/hanpersands
Summary: “Greetings to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed,” he says. “Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.”“It has to be you.”She hates him in that moment, that split second where he finds it so easy to suggest leaving her. “No,” she whispers, and the sound of her voice reminds her that she loves this boy, that she is here for a reason and that reason is him. “I swore you were getting out of this, Mal. If you think I’m going tokillyou, you’re more dehydrated than I thought.”





	great things

_“Greetings to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed,” he says. “Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.”_

For a moment, silence.

The girl stares ahead blankly, as though not reacting to the words will make them go away. Maybe if she doesn’t stir the air, the words will fall through it, break apart and float away into nothingness. Maybe—

Slumped against her, the boy chuckles. The sound is dark and ugly, and holds no part of the smiling boy she had volunteered for. There is a curl of smoke in the distance. Her smoke. His chuckles morph into the screams of the burning.

Nothing else happens. The words remain. Only one of them will stumble out of this arena alive, and the smallest, tiniest, most awful part of the girl wants it to be her.

“It has to be you.”

But she hates him in that moment, that split second where he finds it so easy to suggest leaving her. “No,” she whispers, and the sound of her voice reminds her that she loves this boy, that she is here for a reason and that reason is him. “I swore you were getting out of this, Mal. If you think I’m going to _kill_ you, you’re more dehydrated than I thought.”

A shadow of a smirk flickers across the boy’s face, breaking through a coat of grime and blood and so much blood. His kills were more up close and personal than hers. “You think I can kill you?”

“_No.” _Has there ever been a more ineffective word in any language? What is _no_ supposed to do? It can’t stop this.

Nothing can stop this. But the girl tries anyway, taking the boy’s face in her hands, blunt nails scoring lines in the filth.

“I think that you have friends waiting for you, back in Twelve. I think that made your kills up front and honestly. I think that you don’t refer to them as _your kills_, for crying out loud.” The sob is too big for her throat, too big for her entire body to contain. It tears past the girl’s lips, forcing a shake through her shoulders. “I think that I love you, and that I’ll sit here forever before I murder you. I came here to save you. I’m _going_ to save you.”

A puff of air brushes over the girl’s cheeks. It’s only then that she realises they are wet from something not sweat or blood or any other strange and probably poisonous liquid from the arena. The boy’s hands echo her gesture on her cheeks, his thumbs stroking away her tears slowly and gently.

“I love you too, Alina,” and the girl _hurts_, every inch of her body set alight.

Is this what the people she killed felt like? She envies them their deaths for a moment.

The boy’s lips trace the shell of her ear as she wraps up his words and tucks them deep inside her, somewhere even the Capitol can’t drag them out. His hands leave her face. “I love you,” he says again. It only hurts worse. “And I’m not the one who can give them hope.”

_Yes_.

The girl hates that word even more than know. Hates that even as the two of them grip each other at the foot of the cornucopia, she remembers the crowds chanting her name, the spark of _something_ that had had the Gamemaker telling her she was one to watch.

_I expect great things from you, Alina Starkov_. Even the memory of his cool tones sets a shiver in her spine, and she clutches the boy tighter.

“What does that even mean?” she demands, shaking him a little. “Hope? What Victor ever gave you hope?”

“You,” he says simply, and there is something in the boy’s hand, something that the girl, lost in her thoughts and her memories and the quiet, creeping sensation that she is going to survive this, hadn’t noticed.

The something is a knife. And there is blood on more than his face, more than her hands. There is blood everywhere, and the girl doesn’t understand how he got the knife between them, how he managed to get the angle exactly right, how he could pierce his own heart now when he’s only just stopped years of stabbing hers.

“No.” She tries the word again anyway. “_No._”

“You’ll be okay.”

The words are said with a smile and a trickle of blood that turns into a bubble as the light in blue eyes fades to nothing. One second passes, two, before the canon in the sky shatters everything the girl has every known.

Alina Starkov is alone. And she will never be clean again.


End file.
